Archive for March, 2012

I was lucky enough to see Vicky Saumell talk at IATEFL this year. I met her after her seminar to ask whether she would be prepared to do an interview and lo and behold it was another one of those wacky feelings you get at conferences nowadays: I realised I already “knew” Vicky, as we are connected via our PLN.

Vicky gave a brilliant talk about digital storytelling in the classroom, the slides for which you can see after the video interview. Her talk was given as part of IATEFL’s LTSIG group, or for those of us who can’t deal with all the acronyms: the Learning Technologies Special Interest Group of the International Association for Teaching English as a Foreign Language – phew! In a day or so I’ll be posting an interview with Graham Stanley too, who talks more about the LTSIG and some of their work, so if you’d like to know more about the group, keep an eye open for that interview.

In my fourth interview from IATEFL Glasgow 2012 I spoke to Nik Peachey, a man who probably doesn’t need any introductions at all! Just in case; Nik is a teacher-trainer, educational technology consultant and a blogger on all things to do with language teaching and technology (he’s been blogging even longer than me!) What’s more, Nick is a really friendly, approachable guy, so if you ever get the chance to meet him at a conference, be sure to go and say hi.

Knowing that Nik’s areas of work are very similar to mine, I thought it would be interesting to ask him what advice he has for teachers wanting to get started with technology in their teaching. His answer was a really interesting one, part “old school” and part “new school”; Nick suggests blogging as a good first step (and I heartily agree!) Old school as it’s what teachers have been doing for a while now (proven effectiveness?) and new school as he suggests a great blogging platform which makes life much easier for teachers trying to get started.

Michele Facci, the Business Development Manager for Erickson Edizioni is a smart guy. One of the co-organisers of Erickson’s recent Schools in the Internet Age conference, the temptation must have been to gather together a whole load of internet enthusiasts, much like many of the other educational technology conferences that take place throughout the year. Certainly, I and my colleague Dennis Pozzer were expecting this, and when on the first day it isn’t quite what we got, we were a bit miffed. But Michele explained that Erickson had wanted to offer a balanced conference looking at all aspects regarding technology in schools, and in the round, that’s just what they delivered.

An innovative, passionate educator; an active member of the Webheads and the wider ELT community; happy to share his thoughts, experience and knowledge about our work; a lovely, positive and happy guy – what’s there not to like about Ronaldo Lima Jr?

I met up with Ronaldo at the IATEFL conference and he kindly agreed to join our series of interviews of educators interested in how technology is used for teaching languages. Ronaldo talks about what his experiences of IATEFL 2012 have been and some of the challenges he thinks still face schools who want to include technology in their language teaching curricula.

Scott Thornbury, the renowned author of books for language teachers and famed techno-sceptic talks about what he’s enjoyed at IATEFL Glasgow 2012, as well as commenting on what he likes (and doesn’t like) about using technology for teaching.

For the first of our posts as one of the official bloggers of IATEFL Glasgow 2012, we spoke to Paul Maglione, co-founder of English Attack, an innovative start-up using movies, games and entertainment news to teach English.

Paul talks to us about the highlights so far of the IATEFL conference for him, what he thinks are good and bad uses of technology for teaching and, most interesting of all for me, gamification.

We’ve got some more great interviews coming up in the next few days from IATEFL. So keep your eyes peeled for Graham Stanley, Pete Sharma and the great digital sceptic Scott Thornbury talking about times when he think technology is right for teaching languages among others.